My activity proposed after surfing on the suggested websites was the following:The original idea has been adapted from a lesson plan found in the mysterynet.com.
AIM: A collaborative task which intends to call students attention to creative writing. Ideally the students will have already mastered a great deal of vocabulary such as adjectives and also good use of verbal tenses.
FOCUS: (obviously) on mystery stories and on the vocabulary, tense and style related to this genre.
LEVEL: at least pre-intermediate upwards.
TIME: probably 2 sessions.
PROCEDURE: warming up, activity and follow on.
WARMING-UP
The teacher starts the lesson asking students if they like to read. In case they do: which type of novels, magazines, etc. S/he can ask if they have ever watched a movie based on a book they read. Finally, s/he asks whether they like mystery stories. The teacher can for instance invite one of the students (or 2, not more because it will be too long) to explain very briefly which is his/her favourite story and why. (In case the students are not very collaborative that day, the teacher can also explain his/her favourite story or movie). This activity will probably take from 10 to 15 minutes.
ACTIVITY
The teacher divides the class into groups, depending on the number of students. The class can be divided in 4 or 5 groups. The teacher asks the students to arrange the tables in such a way they can face they companions. At this point, s/he explains they are going to have to make up their own mystery story inspiring themselves in a picture they will receive. (The teacher can find them on google images by typing: mystery, scary, fear, blood stain, chains, prisoner or also by names of horror/suspense movies.)
The students are said to write a page or two (more or less, this depends also on the teacher’s criterion). S/he must give tips on how to start, for instance: “Jennifer was walking back home...”, “The postman came as everyday, but today he had a strange look”, “It was Friday and Mary was watching a movie alone at home.”, etc. Remember that the story must have some certain characteristics such as a scary mood.
The teacher asks the students to make up a list of possible events the story can have, so in this way they will be already developing the framework of their “master” piece.
They are going to read their stories to their friends in a further lesson and will be judged by their own friends in class. However, the teacher can choose to have them writing a story with no end and in the next class get them to exchange their stories and write the end of their friends’.
Examples of pictures that can be used in this task:
(because of technical problems, the pictures can be seen in the file sent through Moodle)
FOLLOW ON
Depending on the advices of their friends, students will have to refine their story so as to include the changes. After this long activity, the teacher can continue with the mystery story theme by bringing some short mystery story to class to do some reading comprehension. An alternative to this is to have the students doing small presentations of their favourite stories and movies. This would only be appealing to a class which has shown an interest towards this genre, otherwise it would be highly demanding. Consider they would have to do some research on stories and read them, it will be time consuming and it would also back off the student a lot. Moreover, it would make the student feel uncomfortable presenting it in front of the whole class.
A nice alternative to this is to ask them to explain a personal story, something that happened which has scared them a lot.
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